Social Networking and Friendship

One of the biggest challenges for enduring, edifying cross-gender friendship-love is what is called the "audience" challenge. In America, the hypersexualized evangelical sub-culture, ensures public perception and/or scrutiny as a legitimate challenge to navigate in any formation of friendship between the sexes. 

As my journey into this social love began to deepen, I really did feel quite alone like I was exploring unknown frontiers. I was an evangelical. I was intent on nurturing depth and intimacy with female friends. Where does an evangelical go with that? Early on in my research it seemed like the data was so sparse and it came in bits and pieces over what seemed a looong period of time. But I would find enough encouragement here and there to continue exploring unfamiliar regions of relationality. 

One encouraging, inspiring directional piece of wisdom I came across was from sociologist Dennis Hiebert in his Journal of Psychology and Theology essay, "Toward Adult Cross-Sex Friendship." After citing how the Apostle Paul talked about how the negative rules of this world lead to an appearance of wisdom (Col. 2:20-23), Dennis suggested, "Thus it may well be more morally prudent for Christians to be proactive and carve out a script for cross-sex friendship that encourages individuals to live virtuously with their sexuality. If and when that happens, the audience challenge of such friendship may be largely nullified" (italics inserted). 

Colossians 2:20-23

Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings.  Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.

 

I intentionally decided to follow Hiebert's course of direction in my journey and knew I was going to create a lot of flak, controversy, discussions, gossip, fears, second-guessing from outsiders (i.e. "audience"), and nervous speculations on the one hand. I was also hoping for productive conversation, receptive people, teachable followers of Christ open to reassess, people I could "mentor" as it were along the way, positive mature discernment, support from like minded-people, with a script that says over the course of time, cross-gender friendships can be edifying, nurturing, ongoing, "committed," intimate and close on a regular basis, on the other hand. 

Because there are very few scripts of deep cross-gender friendships in the evangelical community, there are very few communities who welcome and embrace leaders in their midst who have deep friendships with the opposite sex. Conservative, sexual fundamentalism coupled with Freudian romanticism undergirds the dynamics of many evangelical leaders as well as missional communities. Rules don't have to be written out. There are many unwritten rules that support the dynamics out of fear. 

This brings me to Facebook and friendship. For those of you who follow my blogging or my status updates, I intend to make explicit what you already know implicitly. Facebook is a medium for me in which I intentionally live out this direction and script. That's not all that FB means for me as a social tool for connecting, but I do practice and live out this script on FB.

Now, I don't have a detailed plan from day to day, or week to week. I'm not at all suggesting that those of you with growing , maturing cgfs have to "follow" me in this path. This is something that the Lord has put on my heart. 

I believe in the very core of my being, that carving out deep-friendship love with the opposite sex in God-honoring but nevertheless passionate scripts is what it means to cross the deep divide between the sexes. Therefore its a missional practice that forms and shapes communities of men and women not in the appearance of wisdom in man-made rules, nor in the promiscuity of sexual chaos but in Christ-honoring love, oneness, and discipleship. 

And, social networking on my cross-gender friendships has pretty much been predictable with what I thought would happen and what I wanted to happen. I remember one conservative leader telling me about my posting pics about an outing I had with a cgf on FB: "you should just have taken pictures of the scenery, not of your friend."

Yes, I have received a lot of counsel about what I should include and exclude in my script on FB. I know they mean well. But this is a complex subject to work through that shouldn't be addressed with simplistic dos and don'ts, with black and white, gender neutered rules. This is why I didn't address rules per se head on in Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions, but instead I deconstructed the romantic myth, the narrative many churches and Christian leaders form their written and unwritten rules out of.

On the other hand, I've been richly blessed as I have journeyed into unknown territory. I have found like-minded friends. I have discovered receptive people. I know in my heart that in the course of time, not just in a few weeks, or a couple of months, but over years, a social script of close cross-gender friendship is emerging in social networking.

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Headless Unicorn Guy]

In America, the hypersexualized evangelical sub-culture...

Could you point me to some articles on this (either yours or some of your sources)?

I've lived almost all my life in Southern California (Ground Zero of the Sexual Revolution, which hit critical mass about the time I got old enough to be interested in girls) and have come to the conclusion that American Christians are just as screwed up sexually as everybody else, just one-eightied in the opposite direction.